As an online business owner, you already understand that there are a lot of things you need to do in order to make sure your business is a success. While many of these tasks will depend on the type of business or coaching service you operate, all businesses have one thing in common – in order to be successful you need a way to get paid by your clients and customers.

Choosing a solution for accepting customer payments can be challenging. There are significant security issues, customer trust issues, and potential liability and exposure if you do things wrong. When you decide to use a service to accept customer payments, you’ll still need to seamlessly integrate that service into your website, as well as come up with a way to track what your customers buy over time, promote to them with an autoresponder series and email subscriptions, and build your affiliate network to help you sell even more.

There are, literally hundreds of shopping cart solutions out there! You need to choose the one that is right for you now AND 5 years from now. I often find that the entrepreneurs I speak with have chosen a shopping cart that others have recommended. However good their intentions, they did not analyze the needs of the person seeking the advice. Many people have ended up with the wrong shopping cart and a price point they don’t really need.

Here are a few questions I ask when considering which shopping cart solution to recommend:

· Do you currently have a physical product ready for purchase? A digital product (such as an ebook)? Or a service (such as a coaching program)?

· What is your current sales volume?

· Do you need any of the following?

o Autoresponder

o Email marketing system

o Affiliate program

· Do you have a merchant account (or will be getting one)?

· Now, answer all the above questions projected 5 years from now.

When you know the answer to these questions, you are ready to start shopping for your shopping cart!

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Karen Salter Repoli is the CEO of HIT Virtual Assistants, a multi-VA team providing internet marketing services to clients world wide. She is an active blogger on all subjects related to online marketing and has written several eBooks. Contact Karen at Karen@hitvirtual.com